


signature collection

by yasgorl



Series: from my knees grew flowers [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 16:33:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15465519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yasgorl/pseuds/yasgorl
Summary: He could do this, Steve thinks, deciding to settle on the bed and calm his rearing horses down. He could wait God knows how long while God knows what was happening to Bucky and not touch his dick. This was a thing Steve could do.





	signature collection

Steve’s watching the quinjet land on a patch of overgrown grass when Bucky joins him.

“Don’t bother,” Bucky says, before Steve can even open his mouth. Steve takes a sidelong glance at Bucky instead, taking in the set of his jaw, his long hair whipping around his face. He looks grim but resolute. What Steve yearns to do with every fiber of his being is shepherd Bucky back inside and tell him he’ll take care of it, but if there’s one thing he’s gotten good at it’s reading where the boundary lines are drawn between them and keeping his boots on the right side.

“They’re just kids,” Bucky mutters, low enough the wind nearly snatches the words away. They both watch as the rear ramp lowers.

They’d gotten the call the first time three weeks ago. Steve had seen the news; sequestered as they were from just about everything, some shit still managed to filter through. There was a building frozen solid as an ice block in Chicago, and the newscaster referred to an “unidentified source” as the cause, which meant it was most likely an underage mutant. It had made Steve frown and Bucky peer over the book in his hands, curled up in his reading nook. Stark PR had worked double time on this one which showed both progress and practice. The former was good. The latter was very bad.

*

Sam had called three days later. It was the middle of the night, and Steve fumbled for his earpiece in the dark. He’s done it often enough that it’s like a gut feeling, and he knew what Sam was gonna say before he accepted the call.

“Send the coordinates,” Steve said, in lieu of hello, mouth feeling gummy. Bucky stirred sleepily besides him in bed, shivering slightly from the sudden disappearance of Steve’s weight. Steve doesn’t know why they all crop up at once, but they do. Already since Chicago there’s a firestarter moving across the Midwest.

“We’re sending the quinjet,” Sam replied.

“We?”

“It’s a family reunion, Rogers. I’ll bring the cobbler.”

Steve sighed. Tony and Sam were on speaking terms, which was great, but also everything was on fire.

“I love cobbler,” Bucky muttered, from his comforter cocoon on the other side of the bed. He’d gone to bed in a nightshirt that reached his knees, and it had rucked up during his sleep. Steve tries not to ogle Bucky’s bare thighs. He could be in the heat of battle and god help Steve if Bucky ever flashed a bare ankle.

“Bucky says hi,” Steve said.

“Ten-four,” Sam had said, and the line went dead.

*

Everything considered, the mission is pulled off to near perfection, and Stark’s battalion of lawyers have another mammoth case to cover, docs to seal, stories to spin. Steve doesn’t envy them.

He catches up with Bucky at a predetermined rendezvous point, and he has to catch his breath just seeing Bucky decked out in full gear again. It’s something else, fighting with Bucky at his side, something that sings in Steve’s bones and other more unmentionable parts of his body. He tries to act like a professional and not like a man who’s had constant access to grade-A ass twice a day for the past year and now doesn’t know what to do with himself after less than 42 Bucky-less hours. He’s practically itching for it.

“I’ve got some loose ends to tie up,” Bucky says, drawing Steve up short. He’d already started painting their near-future post-mission evening together in his head.  

“Got it,” Steve says, pressing his lips tight together in a grim smile. He knows Bucky well enough to read between the lines. This is something Bucky’s got to do by himself.

Steve then has no choice but to return to the safehouse. It’s a narrow, multi-storied building that’s taller than it is wide. It’s spartan on the inside, but the furnishings are sturdy and comfortable.

Leaving Bucky goes against every instinct in Steve; he doesn’t go until the whole team’s accounted for and debriefed. But he’s got no business in this part. He’s got to show he trusts Bucky can handle it.

Steve does a quick sweep of the place, despite all the tech making it redundant. It feels good to do it anyway; useful. When he’s done, the silence in the house is too loud, pressing in on Steve as he stands in the bedroom in his quickly stiffening uniform.

He tries not to think of Bucky as he sheds his gear in the bathroom. There’s a shower wide enough to fit the whole team and a tub to outmatch it. Bucky’s already set up an intimidating number of products, crowding the stall shelf and lined up on the sink counter in various shapes, sizes, and hues. Steve determinedly keeps to his own travel-sized products as he lathers and scrubs up and rinses down. His own shampoo is a 3-in-1.

“It’s efficient,” Steve had grumbled, feeling abnormally defensive at the Look Bucky had given both him and his shampoo. Steve was saving both time and money. The damn thing had words on it like _triple action formula_. It was a modern-day miracle as far as Steve was concerned.

“It’s a scam,” Bucky had sighed out, not looking at Steve. He was swatching a line of glosses on his flesh arm. “Okay, A, B, or C?”

“Uhhh,” Steve had said. They were all nice in Steve’s opinion and he couldn’t tell what Bucky was looking for. Steve appreciated all colors, which is what he said, which Bucky gave him another Look for, a Look different than the previous Look and just as searing straight to Steve’s soul. Steve had spent the rest of their CVS visit stalking the end of the aisles pretending he wasn’t ready to jump the first person who so much as breathed funny in Bucky’s direction.  

Now, Steve can kind of smell Bucky’s products just standing next to them, and it makes his chest contract in a terrifying way. He thought he’d feel better after a shower but it only seems to exacerbate his sorry state. Before he’d been warmed up and dusty, blood still pumping the high of battle. Now he was fresh and clean and still warmed up, itching for physical contact. Post-mission sex had become a staple and Bucky-less Steve had not prepared for Plan B.

He could do this, Steve thinks, deciding to settle on the bed and calm his rearing horses down. He could wait God knows how long while God knows what was happening to Bucky and not touch his dick. This was a thing Steve could do.

He shifts around the bed a bit to try and catch a comfortable position, thinking he can nap through this, which turns out to be a big fucking mistake because now he’s got Bucky’s soft scent all over him, deep in his lungs and probably--fucking--sinking into his pores. Steve shoots up out of bed and paces around the bedroom. He’s stirred up, itching for it.

“Alright, alright,” Steve mutters to himself. He strides across the bedroom to the luggage rack. The fact Bucky hadn’t completely unpacked was the only sign of any reticence Steve could discern; no one would be able to tell from Bucky’s steely resolution for the job. Steve gingerly unzips Bucky’s duffle like a bomb might go off, and sifts through the contents with gentle fingers. He settles for a simple white jar with _The Sea_ in French on the side. It’s a cream and there’s a ton of it and common sense held that anything sold in bulk meant it wouldn’t particularly be missed. Steve’s satisfied with his choice as he settles on the bed and slathers his hand up, shoving it down his sweats.

It’s obscene, Steve thinks, but it’s a fleeting thought as he takes himself in hand. Any lingering doubt is swept away as he gives himself a squeeze and goes from zero to a hundred just like that. All it takes is: Bucky the weekend before, settled between Steve’s open legs in a two-piece slip Steve could see right through, one thin strap falling off Bucky’s muscled shoulder, his nipples pointed through the ridiculously delicate fabric. He’d sucked Steve down like that, sliding his hands flat up Steve’s stomach and thighs, his nails bright red in contrast.  

Or: Bucky in his lap, constrained tight like a birthday present if the birthday was taking place in heaven and Steve was the lucky bastard who was born to get it. Bucky’d been wearing a corset, a shell-pink silken thing that cut off below his chest, leaving his nipples free for Steve to suck on. Steve had run his hands up Bucky’s stockinged feet and watched him sink down and-- _fuck._

Steve comes with a groan, spine arching as his dick shoots. He pulls himself through it, pleasure rippling through his whole body and wiping his mind blank for one, long blessed moment. He comes back to his senses slowly, shivering and floppy-limbed. The plastic tub of lotion is still beside him on the comforter, a silent witness, lid fallen off where Steve had left it. A wave of weak embarrassment moves through him. Even the jar seems shocked, mouth open in a silent scream at what it just witnessed. Steve flicks at it in reprimand and moves to shove his sweats off, which is what he would have done beforehand if he’d been thinking with his upstairs brain. What an imbecile, he’d been out of his damn mind. He’s still out of his damn mind because he can’t figure out why he feels so bad. Bucky wouldn’t mind him using a little--maybe a lot--of his stuff. And damn that shit was supple, Steve realizes, feeling at his baby soft hands. The last time they felt like that he was pretty sure he’d been an actual baby.

A wave of exhaustion overcomes him in the moment. Steve doesn’t fling himself on the bed, every last thought on Bucky, but it might come close if someone was here to witness him. Which no one is, so. He has the wherewithal to pull the bedsheet half over his body before he’s nodding off.

Steve’s going to nap and when he wakes up Bucky will be here and order will be restored.

*

One second Steve is nodding off and the next he’s being shoved out of the blank nothingness of sleep by an unholy screech. He jumps out of bed like he’s been shot, scanning the room instantly for imminent threat and ready to tackle whatever was hurting Bucky.

Except Bucky is whole and not bleeding, just standing at the foot of the bed in what’s left of his combat gear. Steve scans him up and down for injuries, then again, before he realizes that Bucky’s not missing any more limbs than he usually is, but he’s spitting mad. And he’s pointing at something. Steve follows the rigid line of Bucky’s arm to the tub of soft baby lotion he’d forgotten to cap and store away on the nightstand. _Oh._

“I can explain,” Steve says.

“Steve, what the fuck,” Bucky says, ignoring him. His voice goes all wobbly at the end which strikes mortal fear deep in Steve’s heart. A furious Bucky he could deal with. A crying Bucky meant he’d well and truly fucked up.

Steve’s got this. He can do words. He can put a string of them together to save his hide.

“Uh,” Steve says.

“This was a fucking three-hundred and twenty-five dollar moisturizer, Steve,” Bucky says. The words slam into Steve chest. He feels all the air squeeze out of him like a rubber toy. _What?_ “And you used it for--for--”

Bucky makes a stiff, wavy-pointy gesture from the jar to Steve’s crotch then back to the jar.

“I can explain,” Steve says again, holding out his hands in a futile gesture of peace. Except he can’t explain, because that’s exactly what he did: that jar and his crotch. He knows he should be saying words again but he feels like his brain’s still stuck at his newly found dick-cream costing as much as what he’d used to hear people paying for a house. He watches Bucky blink in a way that usually meant he was trying very hard not to tear up and in that moment Steve thinks with all his might he’d rather be stuck back in the ice.

“Okay. Whatever. I need space,” Bucky says, and instead of standing his ground Steve sighs and acquiesces, leaving Bucky in the bedroom alone.

*

Steve lasts for all of a minute, sequestered outside of the closed bedroom door. The safehouse has only about a million ways he could entertain himself right now but all Steve wants is to make this right.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says through the door, his voice echoing slightly in the empty hall. He feels slightly ill with how rotten he’s been. “I’ll get you another one! I’ll get you ten! We’ve got the money.”

“It’s not the money,” Bucky replies, voice muffled and so miserable Steve’s stomach clenches up. “It's the _thought_ of the money that counts.”

There’s a pause while Steve’s mind stutters and starts like a faulty engine. He lays a palm flat against the door.

“What?” Steve asks, weakly.

“Leave me alone, Steve,” Bucky says with finality. Steve hears the creak of the bed as Bucky steps off, then the slam of the bathroom door shutting on him and his hopes of getting laid tonight, or maybe ever.

*

Steve leaves. He walks around the house in a deflated imitation of his earlier check. He’d rather Bucky open the door and walk all over his guilt-ridden body than ignore him right now. He knows how delicate the whole thing was, even more so because Bucky hadn’t said a word about it since he’d agreed to the mission. Steve had been a little relieved when he’d seen Bucky had brought some things along, nothing he imagined Bucky feeling bad about leaving if the need arose, but enough that Steve knew Bucky wasn’t feeling completely shut up. And Steve had gone and ruined it all on his disgusting, traitorous dick.

He finds himself somehow back at the bedroom. He lurks in the hall feeling pathetic and creepy for an interminable time. He presses an ear against the door, careful like Bucky might sense him doing the opposite of giving Bucky space. Steve tries to discern variation in the static nothing of sound permeating from the other side, ready to burst in should Bucky be set upon by some unknown threat. Or maybe he’s fallen asleep and straight into a nightmare, fidgeting in that tense, pained way that still sets Steve’s heart racing and Steve won’t be there for him when he wakes up.

After a few more unbearable seconds, Steve’s certain one or both are true, and are in fact happening right this second while he waffles like a fucking wimp. He takes a deep breath and turns the handle slowly, eyes on the shiny metal sphere dwarfed in one sweaty hand.

“Buck?” Steve starts tentatively, sticking his head into the gap of the opening door.

“No,” Bucky replies immediately. He’s on the bed again, with a pillow clutched under him. He raises his head to glare at Steve, eyes red-rimmed, sending a thousand daggers into Steve’s heart.

“Okay,” Steve says quickly, and shuts the door.

He retreats like the coward he is. He turns in place, coughs once and thumps his chest. God, he’s going to die. This is death. His heart feels like it's expanding in his rib cage, painful and tight. He speed-walks to the kitchen and downs a glass of water, hoping it can wash away the clutch in his chest and the iron grip of love on his rational faculties. Steve sets his jaw and stares at his warped reflection in the front of the stainless steel fridge. _You did this,_ Steve thinks, glaring at his traitorous mirror-self who looks gallingly equally murderous back at him. _The fucking nerve._

It’s fine, everything was going to be fine. Steve sets his glass down on the kitchen counter with a very loud _clink_ in the otherwise silent house. The lack of sound itself feels accusatory.

Bucky would get over it, Steve thinks resolutely. This was all going to blow over, and everything would be okay, and Steve had fucked up but he hadn’t irreversibly fucked up and that was all that mattered.

*

“I’ve irreversibly fucked up,” Steve chokes out, two hours later. He hasn’t heard a peep out of Bucky since Bucky had kicked him out the second time. Time crawled at a snail’s pace when Steve was thinking of all the ways Bucky was going to murder him in his sleep, or worse, divorce him, and nothing he’d done in the interim had soothed the hornet’s nest that had replaced his stomach.

“Hello to you too,” Sam’s voice replies. Steve’s out back, pacing behind the shed a few feet from the back of the safehouse. The outside of the shed looked like it had seen better days, with peeling paint and three strategically broken glass panes in a tiny corner window. Inside, there was enough working tech that it needed its own cooling system, and a hatch that led to a fully stocked basement. The first time they’d scoped the place out, Bucky had peeked up from the open hatch and waggled his eyebrows at Steve.

“No,” Steve had said.

“Aw, come on,” Bucky had whined.

“We’re not fucking down there,” Steve had replied, waving Bucky up impatiently.

“Hey. Hey, Steve.”

“Come up, Buck.”

“The ten feet _down_ club,” Bucky had said, then cackled to himself as he’d used the strength of his arms alone to haul himself up, hands planted on the dusty wooden flooring.

Now, Steve would fuck Bucky anywhere, in a basement or on an ice float or amidst an erupting volcano if it meant Bucky had forgiven him.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks, voice sharp. “New intel?”

“No, mission’s fine,” Steve is quick to assure. “I uh. I fucked up with Bucky. I used uh,” Steve clears his throat, then clears it again. Goddamn his tragic lack of imagination and inability to lie to Sam. Steve stops there, and Sam, damn him, knows how to sit with silence.

“I used this lotion of his?”

“ _Wow,_ ” Sam says.

“ON MY HANDS,” Steve cuts in, but Sam is already cackling. “Anyway! It turns out it's more expensive than any lotion has the right to be. What’s a lotion got in it to be 300 goddamn dollars?”

“So Bucky’s upset.”

“Very.”

“When’s the job end?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Have you thought maybe it isn’t about the lotion?”

“You know what. I think maybe it’s not about the lotion,” Steve says.

Sam sighs.

Bucky had built something new and delicate and precious and he’d trusted Steve to have him by his side. Bucky’d said he’d never go back but now he was back; caught between old and new and something in between that was still forming. And Steve had stood by and and jerked off with the symbolic equivalent of Bucky’s tender metamorphosis.  

“That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” Sam says.

“I don’t have to get paid to do the right thing.”

“Captain America, tactical genius.”

“I was _upset_.”

“Where did you say you used the lotion again?”

“Bye, Sam.”  

*

Steve slinks back into the house like a robber in the night. A robber of joy and overpriced lotion. He hears the faint sound of water running, like Bucky’s filling the tub, and then stopping as Steve stands and listens. He decides to take another chance. He’ll take Bucky biting his head off rather than another second of silence.

He finds Bucky in the bathroom, immersed in the gigantic stone tub beneath a mound of bubbles. All Steve can see is Bucky’s head tipped back, headphones jammed over his ears. He’s got an eye mask on with an embroidered set of eyes; one closed, one winking jauntily at Steve, mocking his misery.

“Buck?” Steve says softly.

Bucky ignores Steve with the exception of a loud sniffle that sends a bolt of guilt through Steve’s heart.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says again, keeping to the bathroom threshold. “What do you want for dinner?”

There’s a silence in which Steve folds his arms across his chest then unfolds them, trying to go for casual, then folds them again. He wants to be kissing Bucky at the moment, feeling the hard line of the tub’s lip against his chest, doing all sorts of depraved acts to various Bucky-parts underneath those ridiculous bubbles.

“Go away,” Bucky says.

“Buck,” Steve says, going for stern. He sounds like an ass and fucking _why_ is he flubbing this at every turn.

_SNIFF._

God. Bucky doesn’t need a weapon to kill Steve, just some well-timed breathing to flay Steve from the inside out.

“What part of ‘go away’ do you not understand?” Bucky snaps.

Steve goes away.

*

By the time Steve’s pulling ground beef from the freezer, he’s set with murderous resolution to make the best goddamn burgers Bucky has ever had in his life. He mixes the ground beef in a big glass bowl with a load of spices, then forms the patties and sets them in a cast iron pan on the range.

Steve’s cutting a thick slice of cheddar cheese and feeling despondent when Bucky wanders past the kitchen and into the living room. He’s dressed in a bathrobe that only reaches midway down his calves, a towel wrapped around his hair and soft slippers on his feet that _shush-shush_ across the tile floor. Steve freezes in place and watches Bucky flop down on the leather sofa and turn on the TV. Steve feels the maelstrom in his mind quieten down several notches, just being in the same room again, knowing Bucky’s near and of his own volition.

Steve finishes slicing the cheddar and lays a slab each on the two cooking burgers, covering the pan to let it all melt into the meat. Then he strides into the living room to meet his fate.

*

“Babe--” Steve says, standing at the foot of the sofa.

“Don’t talk to me,” Bucky interrupts. He gives a loud sniffle. It suspiciously doesn’t sound as wet as the one before.

“Buck--”

“I’m watching,” Bucky intones loudly, cutting Steve off. Steve looks to where Bucky’s fixedly staring at a cleaning solution infomerical. He leans over and grabs the remote from Bucky’s hand.

“Hey!” Bucky says, making an aborted move before he remembers he’s ignoring Steve and sits back down, folding his arms at his chest. Steve mutes the TV.

“Bucky,” Steve says stubbornly. He moves to block Bucky’s view. Then he sinks to his knees and watches Bucky struggle not to let his eyes follow Steve down, a fidgety jump in his shoulder betraying him.

“Baby,” Steve says softly. Bucky blinks real quick. Then his eyes flit down to Steve. Steve crams himself up against Bucky’s legs, primly held together so Steve can’t get between them. Steve pushes himself against one side of them anyway, and slides his hands up Bucky’s thighs.

“Buck, look at me.”

“What do you want, lotion-fucker?” Bucky asks flatly.

“Buck. Bucky. I’m sorry. Okay? Look at me please,” Steve says. It takes effort not to rub himself all over Bucky like some sorry sap. He’s sure he’s projecting Captain America steel but inside he feels like a bowl of rice pudding, like a house of cards ready to topple if this is it--if Bucky doesn’t trust him anymore with this special side of him, if he’s disrespected this part he’s been entrusted and Bucky’s finally realized he doesn’t need a fumbling idiot like Steve who uses luxury products for depraved sexual acts.

He feels Bucky give under his hands, the way his body softens, and Steve goes for it. He tugs Bucky’s arms loose and plasters himself down on him, head in Bucky’s lap, hands clutching at Bucky’s hips. He needs to take this damn robe off him, it’s an inch of material too thick for Steve’s liking.

“I’m really sorry,” Steve mumbles into Bucky’s lap. He pulls back up and slides his hands up and down Bucky’s front, feels him melt a little more. And damn but does Bucky still look gorgeous pink and tear-stained and sniffly just like this. His eyelashes clumped dark and thick together with wet. He’s flushed on the bridge of his nose and high up on his cheekbones. His lips are bitten, inviting and plush, begging Steve to suck and nip at them. Steve takes a deep breath in, shoving the baying dogs of his godforsaken libido back behind iron gates. He reaches slowly, framing Bucky with his hands. He slides a thumb at the wet on Bucky’s cheek.

“You look so pretty just like this,” Steve says, gently, and somehow it’s just the right thing to say, somehow the final lingering rigidity to Bucky’s stance softens all the way and he’s Steve’s sweet thing all the way through.

“Steve,” Bucky says, voice thick.

“I’m real sorry about your lotion. Really, I am. I’ll honestly take whatever punishment right now, I feel fucking awful, I’m the worst kinda scum.”

“Ugh, Steve - ” Bucky starts, rolling his eyes a bit.

“No, really I am. And you have every right to be mad at me.”

“You’re not scum,” Bucky insists.

“And I’ll walk out into the street right now and take my shirt off and whip my back raw for all the sinning I’ve been doing behind your back.”

“Steve, good lord,” Bucky says, sharply. But his lips are curving into a smile and he gives a single, aborted huff of laughter.

“We’re on a job,” Bucky grumbles finally, like that’s the reason. He’s smiling even as he says it.

Steve presses his thumb at the edge of Bucky’s lips where they’re lifting, his own lips tugged upward in a big, dumb, matching smile, the storm cloud in his chest clearing. They stare at each other like that for a long, solemn moment. Then Steve’s getting up on his knees and leaning in for a kiss. He pauses right before their lips meet and Bucky - he just melts under him, mouth opening up with the sweetest sigh. Steve kisses him like he’s a dying man in the desert and Bucky is feeding him ambrosia from his lips. Soft and insistent and deep and slow.

“I’m sorry, I’m real sorry,” Steve says between kisses. Bucky moans and sighs and wriggles around under him. Twines his arms around Steve’s neck and cups the back of Steve’s head, threading his fingers through Steve’s hair. His robe falls open at the neck and Steve dives in like a vulture sustained by happy Bucky-sounds.

“Ah. Mmm,” Bucky sighs. He tips his head back to expose more skin for Steve to kiss, sighing extra loud when Steve nips and sucks at the most sensitive parts up the line of his neck, behind his ear.

“Alright, alright. Enough. You’re forgiven,” Bucky says at last, wriggling in Steve’s hold. “You fuckin high-end pervert.”

Bucky slaps at Steve lightly, playing the part. His eyes are bright. He loves this; Steve going crazy for him.

“Hey,” Steve protests. He settles back on his heels dutifully, happy as a clam.  Bucky cracks a smile wide enough that Steve doesn’t even care one bit, he’ll take it. He’ll tattoo it on his ass and get it printed on his business cards. _Captain America: High End Pervert._

Bucky taps Steve’s arm so he knows to lean back in for more kissing. This time Steve pushes Bucky’s hair back and rubs at his chest. He slides his hand down to Bucky’s crotch and squeezes at him over his robe.

“Mmm. Oh,” Bucky says, rocking into Steve’s hand. He shifts around under Steve’s hand for a bit. Steve crawls up so he’s sitting half on Bucky, half on the sofa, and kissing fully at Bucky’s neck. He shoves at the robe to get at a delicious swell of pec.

“What’d you think about?” Bucky asks, voice gone all breathy. He sighs loud and sudden as Steve latches onto a nipple.

“Hmph.”

“Steve. What’d you think about?” Bucky says, pushing suddenly at Steve, like he really wants an answer. They’re both breathing hard and Steve’s dick is straining. He struggles to get his higher faculties back online with the vestiges of blood he has left for his brain.

“What did I think when?” Steve asks. He stares down at Bucky’s lips.

“When you were moisturizing your dick five dollars a stroke.”

Steve’s cheeks flame hot. His eyes shoot up, then away, and suddenly he’s very much present.

“Um. Nothing,” Steve replies stiffly. He looks around the room desperately for an answer.

“Nothing,” Bucky repeats, voice flat, disbelievingly. He raises a single eyebrow.

Steve huffs out a groan, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t jerking it to Bucky related thoughts. But before--all of this--the hottest image in his pathetically thin mental catalogue was abstract and embarrassingly mundane. Like Bucky sweating through his A-shirt and pulling it off, mumbling a curse about the humid summer heat. The shift and play of his muscles; lean in his youth, thicker and ropier later on.

Now, it was the hard cut of Bucky’s trip hips encased in a bloom of taffeta, or a silken slip falling off the rounded muscle of one shoulder while Bucky’s lips slid down Steve’s length. They’d done it all and more yet Steve still felt guilty just thinking about it for his own private pleasure and sweet god he was gone before he’d ever gotten a chance and it was the most terrible thing.

Steve sighs, loud. Bucky looks at him startled-like.

“I was thinking about you,” Steve finally says, mostly to the ceiling. He chances a look at Bucky, who’s looking back with eyes wide, so carefully hopeful that Steve pushes it out, rips the bandaid off the last shred of his dignity. “Thinking about you all dressed up and stuff. You know.” Then Steve clears his throat loud, long, and glares at a point somewhere at Bucky’s throat.

Bucky hoots and digs his fingers into Steve’s ribs, in vain, because Steve is absolutely un-tickle-able.

“He loves me, he really loves me,” Bucky sing-songs, as Steve tries to stand and escape his hold and hopes no one can hear what a sap he is. He soon gives that up and instead straddles Bucky on the sofa, pushing him with one motion that lands Bucky flat on his back. Steve straddles Bucky and grips his wrists, the warm flesh of the right and the unyielding metal of the left, pulling them both above Bucky’s head.

“I love you, alright? Don’t hear that enough?”

Bucky blinks quickly, excited.

“Yeah, but, not that part,” he replies, soft and nervous. “I mean I know you like it but--you like me, so. A part of me just always worries even though you--”

“What, that I’m just entertaining it all?”

Bucky’s eyes start going liquid and it’s too much. Steve leans down to kiss him; his throat and jaw and lips.

“I’m not, okay, I’m not,” Steve says quickly. “I’m a dirty, old man who wants every sweet part of you.”

“I’m not all sweet,” Bucky replies. Steve hauls up and catches the defiant set of Bucky’s jaw.

“And I change my mind,” Bucky continues. He blows a heavy breath out. “I don’t even know my own mind. I liked parts of the mission even though I said I’d never go back and I really thought I wouldn’t. I thought I’d gotten all those parts out.”

Steve stills, sitting back gently on Bucky, hands settling carefully on Bucky’s ribcage.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to get rid of anything.”

Bucky works on that for a second. Steve’s throat squeezes as his mind goes a mile a minute. He forces himself to project calm. He doesn’t want to reject, but he doesn’t want to promise that anything will change.

“I’m gonna be here. No matter how many times you change your mind. As long as you don’t--no matter what.”

Steve catches himself just in time. He sees the moment Bucky thinks it anyway. Bucky reaches up and pinches at Steve’s side.

“I ain’t ever changing my mind on you, sorry pal.”

“Hardwired, huh?”

“Just like your sorry ass,” Bucky replies, grinning up at Steve likes he’s the best thing Bucky’s seen all night, all century, and Steve feels like a million bucks.


End file.
